FOOD
Libby names the 10th relationship of a modern marriage: food
Transcript
So I have to apologize to you all the, as of this recording, the episode that I most recently did, the nine relationships of modern marriage has had nearly 9,000 downloads. That makes it one of my most popular episodes, which is, it was surprising to me. I didn't actually realize how much people would enjoy my thoughts on that. But my apology is that I forgot a relationship. I did. I forgot a really, really important relationship. That is part of modern marriage, really part of any kind of modern cohabiting relationship. Do you wanna hear what it is? Do you have any guesses? I'm gonna let you guess see if you can guess what it is. And I'm gonna just pause for a second.
Okay. I'll tell you it's food. Food is the 10th relationship of a marriage. And I think it's a really important one. It really, you know, some people might say, oh, food. That's not really a relationship, but it is. And I wanna go over why here are some examples cooking together. Do you like to cook together? How well do cooked together? Do you, do you both like to cook? Do you share the same, like cooking techniques, you have good cooking equipment, et cetera. You know, some people really like cooking gadgets, other people, you know, just give me that cast iron pan and that's it, you know, preferred foods, you know, and, and I'm not even into dietary restrictions yet, although that's one too, but just like, what do you love to eat? What is the kind of food you love to eat?
How compatible would a, you know, paleo foodie, be with someone who eats McDonald's for lunch every day. That would be a real problem. And there's nothing wrong with either of those, like ways of eating, you know, it's but the both people would probably make each other feel pretty stressed out. Also just your mindset around food. You know, some people really see food as an essential part of their cultural heritage. Some people see food as just fuel, just like the thing that I used to fuel my body. And they don't really have any emotional attachment to it. Some people see food as like a real source of pleasure. And other people see it as a real social activity. Like eating is something that you would never do alone. Like you really just wanna be in connection with others. And this is the silly one, but it shows up in my house like leftovers.
What's your attitude towards leftovers. Will you eat leftovers? Do you think leftovers are gross? Do you never wanna eat the same thing more than once in a week or would, could you make like a pot of chili and eat the same thing, eat that every day for lunch also, have you eat at restaurants? What kind of restaurants do you like when you go to a restaurant? You know, I mean, this is because in my family, what we do is we share food. So, and when we all go to a restaurant, we all order a dish and then we offer each other tastes of what is on the dish. And I really thought everybody did this, but then I hung out with some of my husband's family and I was like wanting to taste things on my, my husband's plate. And my mother-in-law was like, why do you do that?
Just eat what you ordered if you wanted that you should have ordered it. And I was shocked. I was like, what do you mean we, this is just what you do. And, you know, I have high food compatibility with all of my partners, such that, you know, if there are three things on the menu that I want, and I can't decide between them, the probability is high, that the people I'm with also want those three things. And so we can get all three and then share them all and have the benefit of getting to taste more things. But like not everybody cares about that and would say that that's weird. And they would be like, don't no, this food is mine. Don't take any bites off of it. Right. And then we can go into dietary needs too. So you know, just, do you have any food allergies or anything that you just can't have in the house?
And like, imagine somebody who like eats bread every day, partnering with someone who's celiac and like trying to live together and share a household that would probably be really challenging. And I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying like, you know, honoring that, that compatibility can make a big difference in your day to day in the day to day quality of your life. Another thing is just like timing of meals. Like, are you the type of person who intermittent fasts all day long and then just eats dinner and that's it, or do you kind of eat sporadically, like little meals snacking all day long? Or do you like to eat meals at the same time consistently every day? Or would that kind of consistency feel really like overly structured and confining to you? Like that kind of pattern of eating, especially when you're, like I said, when you're cohabiting, when you're buying the food together can be, can make a difference.
Another thing can be like how you relate to the ethics of food. You know, a lot of people who are vegetarian and vegan and even people who eat meat, they really care about the environmental impact of their food, or they care about the source of their food, or they care about the labor that went into the food, that it was fair and adequately compensated and other people, their attitude is more about like, I want food to be affordable. I need food to be inexpensive. I need food to, you know, feed a lot of people, you know? And so just thinking about what are the priorities there in terms of like your values around food. And I mean, some people have a value around food that they don't wanna be fussy about it, you know, that they actually don't wanna be picky, that they want to be willing to eat whatever.
And other people really have a value of like, I wanna, I want every meal to be enjoyable and something that I'm happy about having, and, you know, those people might struggle with a compatibility issue because like the person who really just wants to be easygoing about food and eat whatever might really find it frustrating to be, you know, with someone who's super picky and the picky person might feel both maybe shamed for, for being picky or if they, you know, if they have really good in their mind reasons for being picky, they might find their, they might not align with their partner's values around not being picky. And again, this can also tie to like class too. I mean, food is really tied up in class background and again, cultural heritage. So and again, that ties into values as well. And so that can be a place where there can be some tension if you, and again, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with having that tension just to be aware of it and that it might cause you some challenges.
Another thing with food can be just health. The relationship you have to food and health. You know, there are people who may have struggled with an eating disorder in the past, or may be currently struggling with an eating disorder who need food conversations to be certain kind of ways. And there might be other people who are like aggressively dieting and wanna talk about the calorie content and the macros and their food. They might wanna talk about, you know, what they're eating and what they're hoping it will do to their body. And that could be really triggering to someone with an eating disorder. So that's another example or, or, you know, there might be people who have like health conditions that require them to eat a very restricted diet again, for, for other people who restrictive dieting is, you know, a trigger point that might be a place of incompatibility and just eating habits too.
Like where do you eat? Do you eat always sitting down at the table? Do you eat in front of the TV? Are you perpetually snacking? Do you eat on the, go in the car? You know, all these different things. Now I think that, I hope that, I mean, I'll tell you the, the reason why this came up for me as a, one of the relationships of a modern marriage is because when you live with someone and you're creating sort of a family dynamic, even if you don't have kids, you might come to the table in the relationship with an expectation around how food is going to work between the two of you. And a lot of times this is something that nobody thinks to explicitly negotiate. Like I definitely didn't like when I moved in with one of my partners, I really had the expectation that we were gonna eat dinner together.
Like every night we were gonna cook together, we were gonna go grocery shopping together. And he was like, no, I'm, I'm not even gonna come home for dinner. I'm going, I'm gonna be out at work. Or I'm gonna maybe like go out with my coworkers afterwards. And you know, I'll be home whenever and I'm gonna eat whatever . And I was like really devastated. And I had to cuz I was really excited about being able to share meals with a partner and have that be a real consistent feature of our relationship. And he really thought that we would just do that on nights where we had a date where we were gonna go out to dinner. Otherwise he was just gonna kind of eat haphazardly without any kind of structure. Ugh. And that was, that was hard. That was actually a tough incompatibility. And again, you can grow into compatibility with each other, but again, I think food is so loaded in so emotional and so tied to so many things, both in healthy and unhealthy ways that you may find yourself partnered with someone, with whom you have a substantial food and compatibility.
And you may have to, again, just sort of restructure how that works for each of you, rather than feeling entitled to impose your way on the ecosystem that you're in. And it's a place where, you know, if you really, I mean, I've had this happen. So I have, I'm, I'm a person who like, I love the work of health at any size. I love the worth, the idea of intuitive eating. And I also think our food system is really set up for people to not have a healthy, balanced diet. And so like I hold those two things of intuitive eating really important. Also our food system churn out stuff that's high in sugar and fat and salt that lights up our receptors in our brain that just make us wanna eat more and more and more of it. So it can be tricky to be intuitive about it when the food is sometimes like literally hijacking your brain.
So, so, but like no, anyone, like there are people in my life that just don't wanna hear that they don't wanna think about it. They don't wanna think too deeply about it. They don't wanna hear me talk about, you know, the benefits of the gelatin and bone broth on your guts. I mean, like there's people who really don't wanna hear about that stuff. One of my best friends was like that, you know, she just, when I would talk about food stuff and talk about like microplastics in our fish or, you know, factory farmed meat or whatever it might be like, she was just like, I just don't wanna think about that with you. And I really wish she wouldn't talk about it with me. And I needed someone to talk about it with. I really did. I didn't wanna feel alone in it. And I think that's, that's where again, you know, even if you're not polyamorous, like kind of being with the reality that I might need someone in my life that I can share my food culture with, or my food needs with, or my dietary restrictions with, or my values around food with, if that's not available with the partner that I'm living with, or maybe the partner that I'm living with, I can't live with because us sharing a refrigerator and a pantry is just, it's just too incompatible.
Or, you know, maybe we can live together, but we can't go out to eat together. You know,just because we could never agree on a restaurant that we'd meet both of our dietary needs, and then there's, there needs to be room to grieve that, but then also get that need met elsewhere. So to sum up the 10th relationship of modern marriage is in my view food. I think food is a majorly overlooked and perhaps underrated vector of compatibility in relationships. And I think in and of itself, food is a relational practice. And my invitation to you is to reflect what role does food play in your relationships? How compatible or incompatible are the people in your life with you around food. And does that mean anything to you and how could you potentially make your relationship around food, more nourishing . And lastly, I wanna invite you, is there anything that I missed around these relationships within a modern marriage? Is there anything else I realized I forgot food and I think food's a really important one. Is there anything else, let me know, send me an email Libbysinback.Com or,just hit me up on social media.
